The practitioners’ points of view on the creation and use of personas for user interface design

Abstract

We investigate how practitioners in the field of user interface design create and use personas in order to know the challenges they face with this technique and improve it, if needed. We interviewed 16 practitioners from companies of different sizes in Canada and United States. Main results reveal that designers recommend the use of personas in projects of user interface design. They stress the importance of using real data to define personas so designers and stakeholders can trust them. They validate their personas and consider it is especially important for personas based on assumptions or brainstorming. They report that in most cases, the process of creating personas take several weeks and should involve the whole design team. They often stretch a same persona to different projects but are critical towards this practice. They see that personas are mainly used at the beginning of the project, as a North Star for design. They assert that personas should not replace user testing with real users.